This is why I purposefully included the phrase "We are all basically the same thing" when referencing humans, my point was to emphasise that some humans may be more inclined to one activity vs another. You don't specifically NEED a labrador to bring back the duck you shot, any dog could do that with proper training, but, the labrador is specifically bred to do it. So will do that particular task well.

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Dogs can vary quite wildly so maybe not the best example but hopefully I made my point, but since we're on the subject of intelligence, it isn't just race difference, what about male female differences. Are girls smarter than boys nowadays because they seem to be performing better in school? There is no "danger" in talking about things like this as long as you realise that there is no "superior" race, just one race may be more inclined to one activity than another.

In the first half of the 20th century, some people were convinced that Jewish people were genetically gifted to play basketball. College and professional teams were filled with them, so obviously it must people because of their genetics. The truth was less complex. Basketball is popular in the inner cities and at the time, a large portion of the inner city poor were Jewish people. Nowadays, a large portion of the inner city poor is African American. So maybe it's not genetic, but economic.

Of course, the percentage of African American athletes in the NFL and NBA does seem too large to be explained by economics. However, maybe it's a case of a self-perpetuating myth. If we all believe that African Americans are genetically better suited for football and basketball, we might be funneling to kids towards those sports rather than others. And if we all believe that African Americans are better at sports than academics, we could be encouraging them to play sports more than we are to pursue academic interests. I would also say that these days, African American boys are going to be more interested in the NFL or NBA because so many of the players look like them.

But how did we get here? I'm just going to throw this out there because I don't have the data to confirm it. Maybe it is an economic issue. Let's not forget that sports haven't always been very lucrative for athletes. It's possible in the 1960s & 1970s, fledgling sports leagues like the AFL and the ABA had to fill their rosters with cheaper African American athletes in order to compete with the more established NFL and NBA. Then the mergers of these leagues might have created a situation where African Americans were overly represented. After that, it could have continued as owners tried to maximize their profits. But like I said, I don't know if this is true, it's just a theory. It could be completely baseless, but I would be curious to know if anyone had tried to look into it.